TURKEY – MAJESTY, MOSQUES AND MUD

… But not necessarily in that order.

It finally came time to leave Istanbul. Notwithstanding that (along with some snow) we had some lovely weather during our time in the city, the weather on leaving was a touch more questionable. 

The trip started rather sedately. It was relatively grey, but we pulled off our exit from the city pretty efficiently (always impressive as large cities are typically not made easy to cycle out of – case in point our day cycling Istanbul highways on the way in). Tom delivered his back brace (which he had been wearing since Croatia) to the hospital (yay! They said it was not needed anymore). We dropped off a variety of items to the homeless that spend their days on Galata bridge. And we made it to the ferry with 15 minutes to spare – which was somewhat tight given the COVID related requirements to board. That said, we made it and enjoyed a mildly seasick inducing trip before being deposited on the other side of the Sea of Marmara at Yalova. We were then treated to our first hills in a month and promptly swore a lot (mostly me), gasped more (possibly also mostly me) and just about died (this was for sure true for both of us) in the course of our less than graceful ascent.  We also got reacquainted with the Turkish rural canine population.

A day of total freezing rain followed as we made our way around a lake to Iznik to check out the tile production. I will report that while this is perhaps not true in non-COVID times, I did not really think Iznik was worth visiting for ceramics. There is better stuff to be had if you are interested elsewhere in Turkey. However, it was pretty cheap in Iznik, so not a total waste of time – and we managed to increase the weight of our panniers after just shipping a bunch of stuff off in Istanbul. Sigh. Also, in the summer, the lake is probably very lovely. Note that the picture below was taken the day we left – where it was at least sunny if still absolutely freezing.

We cycled through to Bursa and in frosty temperatures. However, the cycle across the mountains around Iznik was stunning and we found ourselves in alpine feeling plateaus with frost on the ground, cute towns and lovely scenery. Bursa itself was also a treat. This section shall be entitled “The Mosques”, because the mosques in Bursa were really excellent. But, also, there were obviously mosques in every tiny town and we enjoyed hearing the call to prayer ringing out across the countryside everywhere we went. The Ottoman capital prior to Istanbul, Bursa, has a lot of lovely old monuments, mosques and bazaars. The tile work pre-dates the more famous Istanbul mosques, but is magnificent all the same and the vibe of the city is quite cool. We had a great time and I would definitely say it was a highlight from a city perspective in Turkey. Culinary highlights also included this being the home of the Iskender Kebab (basically lamb doner kebab on a chopped up pide with tomato sauce and yoghurt – sounds simple, but (in my opinion) is rather excellent) and my favourite bakery.

We left Bursa in lovely weather and high spirits. Unfortunately this is where things started to go a bit haywire – or, muddy.  This is the section I shall entitle “The Mud”. There was lots of it. It was sticky. It stuck under our fenders and resulted in hours of digging it out of the tires, unloading the bikes, carrying gear, carrying the bikes, fording streams carrying said gear and bikes, a minor breakdown and, eventually, camping in the damned stuff. The combination of our maps app putting us on farm tracks and roads that did not exist coupled with the seasonal abundance of boggy land resulted in this particularly disgusting mud plaguing us for a couple of weeks. While it was probably not that bad compared to what a lot of touring cyclists deal with (cue Instagram making me feel like an absolute wimp for complaining), it was not something either of us were keen on at all and, each time we managed to ford our way out of some exciting misadventure or other, we seemed to quickly find ourselves right back in the middle of another bog (or at the end of a road leading to nowhere as was sometimes the case). Sigh.

Anyway, eventually we did seem to make it out of the Turkish bogs and cycle into Bergarma in an appalling headwind (mud alone would have been boring apparently).  Thankfully, from here, things seemed to improve.  This is the section entitled “The Majesty”.  I mainly attribute this to the various insanely amazing Roman/Greek/Other ruins we encountered through our time on the Aegean coast (and basically the balance of our time in Turkey). Starting from Bergama, these were a real treat and a total highlight for both of us.  On the Aegean coastal plain we hit the following ruins: Ancient Pergamon, Ephesus, Priene, Miletus and Didyma. 

Pergamon (now Bergama) was notable for being on top of a hill overlooking a great town and for the fantastic amphitheatre cut into the somewhat vertigo inducing hillside. Ephesus is the biggest draw card in Turkey after Istanbul and is genuinely pretty damned impressive.  The site stretches 3km or so and is set in really lovely surrounds. There was also lovely sunshine, spring flowers all over the place and the delightful town of Selçuk to enjoy.  Priene and Miletus were enjoyed during a few days wild camping down the coast.  Priene was set on an amazing hilltop amid olive groves and pines and Miletus (possibly my favourite) had an amazing theatre, which was coupled with these crazy almost Nilotic feeling submerged ruins. The absolute best part was that it was free and there was no one there, so we promptly set up our tent directly across from the main temple and settled in for the night. We have a friend that once told us that back in the 70s when he visited Petra in Jordan, he slept in the caves on the site. We have always thought about this and how it would have been to visit at that time. Camping amid ancient ruins at Miletus where normally there would be lots of people about reminded us of this. Now, it was just us and the shepherds that were pretty happy to make conversation.

I think the most telling thing to note on the Aegean coast in Turkey is that we were seeing it with almost zero tourists. In Ephesus, for example, one day in the summer prior to COVID, 12,000 visitors came through the site.  When we were there, there were perhaps 50 people in the entire place.  Considering that most of the towns were pretty quiet due to various timed lock downs and curfews, we quickly learnt that focussing our attentions on these ancient sites was the best way to make the most of the situation of being in Turkey during COVID. Precious little in the way of vibe in the towns, but a whole lot of bang for one’s buck at the tourist sites – also time spent wild camping in various less inhabited areas presented a lot less COVID-y risks (while this blog post is super late, this was all happening prior to vaccinations being generally available).

It is probably also worth noting that this was a time of various considerations about what next for us. Unlike some digital nomads or other travellers, both Tom and I are typically employed doing jobs in set places and (for us) travel must eventually come to an end. Since Istanbul, we had started looking at where we wanted to land next a bit more seriously. As such, most of the travel through this section of Turkey involved stopping at various seemingly random spots that had hotels with reasonable internet connection in order to have an interview or catch up with former colleagues. Not super exciting, but for this reason, we landed in the towns of Foça and Didim along the Aegean coast. Foça was a very cute holiday seaside town with fishermen hanging around. Didim was a holiday resort style town in season and one with which we would not typically be particularly enamoured. That said, off season and during a pandemic, it was really quite lovely. A quiet beach front with old style concrete buildings and balconies overlooking the sea (think a 1970s style beach town maybe). We rather happily spent a couple of days here enjoying the reappearance of the sunshine we had been waiting on in advance of heading back inland for our last stretch of cycling through to Antalya.

January/February 2021